A Dallas drone hobbyist was flying his rig around one bright Texan afternoon, scouting the skies, when he hovered across something perturbing: an enormous, oozing river of blood behind a meatpacking plant. That's gross and illegal! Here come the cops.

The pilot tells sUAS News his reaction, which sounds remarkably calm given he discovered a huge stream of blood emptying into the Trinity River:

I was looking at images after the flight that showed a blood red creek and was thinking, could this really be what I think it is? Can you really do that, surely not?

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Unfortunately, you can do it! But not legally. Federal and state authorities are now on that meat plant's ass—fetid pig blood should not be in waterways—all thanks to aerial diligence. As sUAS News points out, this is the kind of environmental bust that would've likely never happened before the present day. It's also refreshing to see an aerial drone used to discover (and potentially choke) a river of blood, rather than creating one. [sUAS News]